When Escape Stops Helping
There is a difference between activities we use to escape and those that help us grow — even though both can look like taking a break.
Scrolling your phone for a few minutes to decompress isn’t the same as losing hours because you don’t want to feel or deal with life. Going out for fun isn’t the same as using distraction to avoid the discomfort that growth brings. The behaviors can look similar on the outside, but they lead to very different outcomes.
Growth isn’t about removing comfort or fun. We all need relief and places that don’t feel so heavy. The difference is whether what you’re reaching for is moving you forward — or helping you disappear.
When Relief Turns Into Avoidance
Have you ever been scrolling on your phone, glanced at the time, and realized an hour — or two — has passed? Or spent an entire weekend binging a series, only to notice on Sunday night that you still need a shower and tomorrow is already knocking?
If we’re honest, most of us have been there. And sometimes, allowing your mind and body to check out is restorative — refreshing even.
The struggle comes when this becomes a pattern, when disengaging slowly starts to replace living, day after day, hour after hour.
The shift is rarely dramatic. It happens through repetition — when relief becomes the place you long for instead of the life you’re meant to return to.
The Kind of “Fun” That Requires Presence
If you’ve read my Dancing Alone post, you know that I took up salsa dancing after my counselor suggested I needed to start doing things on my own — things I actually wanted to do.
This was different than the dancing I had done in the past. It wasn’t the get wasted and dance the night away kind of environment. It required learning, discomfort, and relational interaction. It required vulnerability — and vulnerability is where growth happens.
It was fun and exhilarating. But it also required presence. I couldn’t disappear inside it. I had to stay awake, aware, and engaged.
Escapes That Help You Return
Recently, I started watching a TV show with my daughter. I had been dreading it because “it wasn’t my thing.” Reluctantly, I sat down and let her turn it on.
Not only have I enjoyed the show, but it’s become a meaningful time with her — a bond that has brought both rest and accountability. It requires me to stop doing the dishes or running around checking things off my list and to simply be still and present.
She’ll often say, “Okay, mother — put your phone down and watch.”
We’ve spent hours snuggling, talking about characters and storylines, laughing and crying together.
This kind of escape doesn’t take me away from my life — it brings me back into it.
Escapes That Keep You Gone
When I first went through my separation and then divorce, the silence on the weekends my kids spent with their dad was crushing. I couldn’t bear it — but I also couldn’t socialize.
For months, my weekends often found me curled up in bed at least one night, sometimes both, drinking a few glasses of wine and watching whatever Hallmark movie or Netflix series was ridiculous enough to numb my racing, heartbroken, lonely mind.
It allowed me to stay in denial. To remain stuck in my pain. To quietly hope that someday someone else would rescue me from it.
At the time, it was the best I could do. It wasn’t weakness — it was survival.
It softened the pain enough to survive — but it didn’t move me forward.
Awareness Comes Before Change
One therapy session after one of those lonely weekends, I admitted that I was miserable — and stuck. I was waiting for relief to come from somewhere else while avoiding the truth that only I could change my life.
That realization was freeing and terrifying.
None of this means you’re doing life wrong. Survival often requires escape, especially in seasons that feel overwhelming or raw. Sometimes getting through is the bravest thing you can do at the moment.
But growth usually asks for something steadier. Moments where you stay present instead of checking out. Where relief doesn’t numb you, but steadies you enough to come back.
Awareness doesn’t demand that you change everything. Sometimes it just asks you to notice which escapes leave you restored — and which ones leave you a little further from yourself.
That noticing, on its own, is often where growth actually begins.
